Lucy—what I call my migraine headaches. Not badass Lucy Lawless or Lucy Liu. Not slapstick Lucy Ricardo, because I absolutely don’t love my Lucy. And to be clear, my migraine’s a Lucy not a Lucille. Lucilles are gritty, rock ’n’ roll goddesses. B.B. King’s Lucille survives a fire; Little Richard’s Lucille deserts a lover in the middle of the night; Kenny Rogers’ Lucille takes off her ring, quits living on dreams. Lucys, on the other hand, can be sneaky, sidestepping devils. Like chocolate-covered cherry bombs—brown-bland on the outside, magma-ragey on the inside. My people-pleasing Lucy becomes sadistic Peanuts Lucy at the least hint of rain. She kicks me when I’m already down on my hands and knees salivating over the toilet bowl. She locks me in a dark cell until I submit to her will. And for all the LSD freaks in the cheap seats who imagine migraines to be a groovy trip I say, “Lucy in the Sky” can stick her diamonds where the sun don’t shine because auras are no damn fun. There’s never a pot of gold at the end of my migraine rainbows, just Dr. Milgram’s goon squad lying in wait to shock me again when a cold front rolls in.
poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Akitsu Quarterly; Contemporary Haibun Online; Failed Haiku: A Journal of English Senryu; Gyroscope Review; Ink Sweat & Tears; Maudlin House; Modern Poetry Quarterly Review; Prune Juice Journal of Senryu & Kyoka; Sledgehammer Lit; tsuri-dōrō (a small journal of haiku and senryū); Unbroken Journal; and Whiskey Island.
